Mixing humor and pop culture to boost flu shot rates

My colleague wrote today about how researchers at Johns Hopkins have devised a new method to track flu trends using Twitter. Over on Healthland, Bonnie Rochman writes about the use of social media outlets like Twitter and YouTube to communicate important public health messages that are fun, engaging and easy to understand for patients.

In the above video, Zubin Damania, MD, better known as ZDoggMD, parodies pop boy band One Direction to spread the importance of getting the flu vaccine. The video was produced and first screened at Zappos’ all-employee meeting in August, and the online company says there’s been a 35 percent increase in flu shot adoption over the previous flu season.